by M C Beaton
Cursing the fact that with servants at the castle always going off sick with bad backs or whatever other Highland excuse occurred to them, leaving Priscilla to fill their jobs, Hamish said, “That just happened. I woke up and found her in bed.” Her voice dripped icicles. “Indeed? I will tell her you called.” The line went dead and he looked miserably at the receiver before slowly replacing it. Why, when he had done the right thing by getting himself out of a cold relationship, did he still get so dreadfully hurt? A psychiatrist would say it pointed to a lack of love in childhood that he should long for the unobtainable, and yet he had had a very loving childhood. Bugger analysis, thought Hamish Macbeth, and geared himself up instead to gate-crashing me interview with Mrs. Beck.
§
A furiously rolling eye in his direction was the only sign of Blair’s displeasure when Hamish quietly followed the detectives into the bed and breakfast. Mrs. Beck was sitting in the front parlour under a sign which warned guests that the terms were bed and breakfast and no matter what the weather, they were expected to make themselves absent from the house immediately after breakfast was over.
Mrs. Beck did not look at all like her sister. She was small and plump with that brisk, no-nonsense look about her which often betrays a total lack of humour. We all adopt masks, thought Hamish dreamily. Somewhere along the line, Mrs. Beck had decided on the role of capable housewife who did not suffer fools gladly and would probably play it to the end of time. Did he have a mask? he wondered. Did he…?
“Sit down, Macbeth, and stop gawping like a loon,” snapped Blair. Hamish hurriedly retreated to a small chair in the comer of the parlour.
“Now, Mrs. Beck,” crooned Blair, adjusting his truculent features into the oily expression he wore when facing the recently bereaved, “we are all shocked and saddened by your loss.”
“Enough of that,” said Mrs. Beck, clutching a large battered learner handbag on her knees. “You don’t give a damn, so let’s not waste any time.”
Her accent was Scottish, which surprised Hamish. Rosie had had an almost accentless voice and he had assumed her to be English.
“Then we won’t waste time,” said Blair, returning to his usual bad-tempered character. “We believe your sister found out something about a man who was murdered here, Randy Duggan. We believe she wanted to use the information about this man, who was possibly a criminal, in one of her books, and that is the reason she was killed.”
“What is this? What kind of policeman are you?”
“Did she try to take your husband away from you?” Hamish’s voice was suddenly sharp.
“How did you find out about that?”
Hamish remained silent. The wind began to rise outside with a low, keening, moaning sound which meant even worse weather to come. A puff of smoke belched out from the dismal little peat fire which was doing little to warm the room.
Blair, for once, had the wit to remain silent. “It was just after Bob and me were married,” said Mrs. Beck. “She came on a visit. Bob was an overseer at an electronics factory and he was made redundant. I took a job in a shop because although he had his redundancy money, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. So I was out all day. And then I found out they had been going to the movies in the afternoon when I was out and to lunch as well, spending that precious redundancy money while I slaved away selling women’s underwear. There was a big scene. I gave Rosie her marching orders, and Bob said he was going with her. But I’d found out the night before from the doctor that she was pregnant. So I told him that and he stayed and Rosie went. That’s all.”
And what a wealth of bitterness ‘that’s all’ covered, thought Hamish. Rosie had probably not fancied Bob in the slightest but was determined to prove to her sister that she could do anything better, and Mrs. Beck had probably crowed over Rosie about being married.
“Where were you when Rosie was murdered?” demanded Blair sharply.
“I was at home.”
“With your husband?”
“He only comes home at the weekends. He works in Birmingham.”
Again Hamish’s voice. “Do you know if he saw your sister at any time?”
Her eyes flashed. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“But then you wouldnae know,” said Hamish, almost as if talking to himself. “He was away all week. He could take time off from work and go where he liked. Where was he the night of Rosie’s murder, for example?”
She looked at this Highland tormentor with a slight air of triumph. “He phoned me from Birmingham that very evening.”
“How did you know he was phoning from Birmingham?”
“Aye,” put in Blair. “He could have been phoning from up here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong! Bob’s digs are next to the railway line. He always phones at nine in the evening and at nine a train always goes past on the line outside and shakes the very place. I heard it.”
“That seems conclusive enough,” said Blair heavily. “Mrs. Beck…or may I call you Beryl?”
“You may call me Mrs. Beck.”
“Just write down your husband’s address. That will be all for now. PC Black will take you to Strathbane now to formally identify the body. Do you know if Miss Draly made a will?”
She shook her head.
“We’re still sifting through her papers. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”
They all left and Hamish went back to the police station, made a cup of coffee and sat down and stared at the kitchen wall.
Here was a new scenario. What if the murders of Duggan and Rosie were not connected? He listened to the now screaming wrath of the wind outside and rose and went to light the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. When it was crackling merrily, he sat down again. He had come across many cases of sibling rivalry before, although none of them had amounted to murder. Here were two sisters—one bossy and sure of herself, and then there was the unknown quantity of Rosie. What did he know of Rosie? Possibly lesbian, but liked to get attention from men. Liked power. Perhaps that was it. Would she let Bob go just like that, or would she, over the years, try to keep him on a string? He thought of his past burning sexual frustration over Priscilla. He thought of the times he could cheerfully have murdered her. What if Rosie had never gone to bed with Bob, but had kept tugging his leash? Exciting secret meetings, always with the promise of sex held out. Did she do that? Had she done that? Was that what she did with Randy, and when he came on to her was that what had prompted the row? He suddenly wanted to see Archie Maclean. The fishing boats would not be out in such weather.
He went out and fought his way against the gale to the bar, but Archie was not there, so, with a certain reluctance, he called at his cottage. Hamish, like everyone else in Lochdubh, found Mrs. Maclean terrifying.
Mrs. Maclean was working ferociously over at the sink, scrubbing at a pot. Archie was sitting gloomily on a hard chair in the middle of the kitchen in his tight clothes. The floor had been recently washed and Archie’s highly polished boots were resting on a square of newspaper.
“Like a dram, Archie?”
Archie brightened. “That would be grand.”
Mrs. Maclean whipped round and brandished a pot-scrubber like a weapon. “You are not to be wasting good money on the drink.”
“I’m paying,” said Hamish mildly.
“Well, don’t be long,” she said reluctantly. “It’ll give me a chance to wash that floor again. You should hae left your boots at the door, Hamish Macbeth. This is a clean house.”
“Cleanest in Lochdubh,” agreed Hamish.
“Wait!” she screeched as her husband got to his feet. She picked up a newspaper and, separating the pages, spread them I out across the floor in front of him like stepping stones. Archie took down a crackling black oilskin from a peg and shrugged himself into it, and together both men escaped into the howling night. Conversation on the road to the Lochdubh bar was impossible because of the vicious screaming of the wind.
The bar was quiet that evening, to Hamish�
��s relief. Archie asked for a whisky and went to prop up the bar in his usual way but Hamish led him to a small table in the corner.
“Did you mourn Rosie?” asked Hamish.
Archie smoothed the sparse hairs over his head with a gnarled hand. “I’m right sorry she’s dead,” he mumbled.
“But you did not cry?”
“Och, come on, Hamish. Greetin’s for bairns.”
“Try to think clearly, Archie. This is important. Were you fond of her?”
There was a long silence while the fisherman struggled for words. At last he said: “The fact is, I was a wee bit flattered. Her being a writer and all. She told me I wass a highly intelligent man. But with her gone, it iss as if she neffer existed. Do you know what I mean?”
“But while she was flattering you and making you cups of tea, did you ever think of having an affair with her?”
Archie blushed deeply. “Och, Hamish, the thought neffer crossed my mind and that’s the truth. I’ve only got to look in the mirror.”
“You’re a modest man, Archie, but you must have wondered why she flattered you and cultivated your company.”
The little fisherman’s eyes were suddenly shrewd. “I think she wanted me to fall in love with her,” he said.
“And why would that be?”
“The ladies like the men to fall in love with them even when they’re not interested. It’s the way they are. Makes them feel good.”
“She was right about the one thing, Archie. You are an intelligent man. I’ll buy you another and then I’ve got to go. I’ve got a phone call to make.”
§
Back in the police station, Hamish got through to Birmingham CID. He was lucky in that he got a clever and bored detective who was anxious for action. He was Detective Sergeant Hugh Perrin.
Hamish outlined the details of the murder of Rosie Draly and then said, “I was just wondering whether it would be possible to get a search warrant for Bob Beck’s apartment. You see, when he made that phone call to his wife, she said he must have been down in Birmingham because she heard the nine-o’clock. Now all he had to do was make a tape recording of that train, take it up to Sutherland and play it.”
“You’ve got a point there. But you say there was evidence that papers and computer discs had been burnt in the fireplace? Doesn’t that point to the murderer of Duggan?”
“Beck could ha’ been burning evidence of letters from him and letters back to him.”
“Bit far-fetched. If that was the case, why didn’t he just chuck this tape of the train going past in the fire as well?”
“I think when he murdered her, he might have got rid of any evidence of letters. Then he would sit down and phone his wife. Wait a bit. He wouldn’t phone her from Rosie’s because we checked the calls for that evening. Damn, we should have been checking back through the past few months. Think o’ this. He needs a phone. He can hardly stand in a phone box and operate the tape recorder properly. He might be pressed for time. So he would go to some hotel or motel, on the road south and phone from there, not too far from Lochdubh.”
“There’s your answer then,” said Perrin. “You get evidence he was anywhere near the scene and we can haul him in…easy. I’m going to be here all night.”
With a fast-beating heart, Hamish said goodbye and reached for the battered phone book. He began to phone hotels and boarding-houses in the immediate area, asking if any stranger had checked in on the evening of the murder for one night and if there had been a London phone call on the bill. He gave Mrs. Beck’s number. And then, just when he was about to give up, he remembered the new Cluny Motor Inn on the A9 and phoned there. He could not believe his luck. Not only was there a clear record of Bob Beck’s having phoned home but he had even used his own name.
He phoned Detective Sergeant Perrin with the news. “We’ll get him in,” said the detective triumphantly. “But surely he hasn’t still got that tape? Surely he chucked it out the car window or something.”
“If you pull him in,” said Hamish, “I’ll go out to the Cluny Motor Inn and go through the trash. With any luck it hasn’t been collected.”
He stopped only to pick up his radio, which had a tape deck, from the kitchen table before driving off into the wild night. Sheets of rain battered against the windscreen and he thought bleakly of sitting in the Land Rover with Priscilla waiting for Blair and the others to arrive and experienced a stabbing pain of hurt and loss in his gut. He marvelled that the pain could still be so intense. He didn’t feel like a drink or a pill to ease it, but rather thought of taking a shotgun and blasting a big hole in his stomach, not to kill himself, but, like a cartoon animal, to leave a nice clean round hole where the hurt had been.
At last he reached the motor inn and eagerly asked the manager if he could search through the hotel rubbish, “Suit yourself,” said the manager. “It gets collected tomorrow. It’s all round the back.”
He led Hamish out to the back of the hotel, where two giant metal rubbish bins gleamed wetly in the lights from the inn. “You’d best leave me to it,” said Hamish gloomily. “I’ll need to take everything out.”
“I’ll make it easy for you,” said the manager. “The bin on the left is the kitchen waste. The one on the right is mostly other stuff from the rooms, old newspapers, that sort of stuff.”
The bin was so large that, tall as he was, Hamish had to stand on a box to reach down into the contents. The hours went past as he patiently sifted through cartons, newspapers, magazines, cigarette butts, condoms, sandwich wrappings and empty bottles. He threw everything out over his shoulder and then climbed into the bin as the contents grew lower and by the light of his torch ferreted around in the bottom. His hands closed on a cassette and he gave a whoop of triumph. He shouted for the manager, who came running out. “I want you to witness that I am taking this out o’ the bin,” said Hamish. “We’ll take it into reception and play it.”
Together they went back into the warmth of the reception, where Hamish had left his radio. He put the tape in the deck and pressed PLAY. After a few seconds, the throaty voice of Cher blasted around the room.
Hamish did not normally swear, but when he switched off the tape deck, his oaths resounded round the room. “Here! Enough o’ that,” said the manager. “If you’re finished, take yourself off.”
“I’m going for another look,” said Hamish stubbornly.
He went back out into the wind and rain and climbed back into the large green metal bin, concentrating on the refuse from the hotel rooms which was in the small plastic garbage bags used to line the waste-baskets. He opened one at the bottom and shone his torch. An empty half-bottle of whisky, a crushed, empty cigarette packet, several butts, soiled tissues…and a tape.
Once more, he called the manager. “What is it this time?” demanded the manager with heavy sarcasm. “Dolly Parton?”
“I want you to witness I’m taking this out of the bin.”
“Oh, sure.”
Hamish climbed out. Together they went back into the hotel again. Hamish slotted in the tape and switched on the machine. At first there was silence, broken only by the hiss of the tape, and then suddenly the room was filled with the sound of an approaching train. A slow smile broke on Hamish’s thin features.
He listened until the sound of the train had finished. “Is that what you wanted?” asked the manager.
“It’s the very thing.”
“Well, I’m short-staffed at the moment, so get out there and put that rubbish back.”
But Hamish had had enough of ferreting through rubbish.
“It’s all police evidence,” he said. “You’ll need to leave it as it is until the forensic boys get here.”
As he drove back to Lochdubh, Hamish’s feeling of triumph began to ebb. He should have told Blair what he was going to do. Blair would be furious. And sure enough, when he drove towards the police station, he saw the cars parked outside, and in the light of the blue lamp over the front door, swinging wildly in the wind, he
made out the truculent features of Blair.
“What have ye been up to, pillock?” shouted Blair. “I got a call frae Birmingham telling me they were pulling in Beck for questioning and I didnae know a thing about it. Daviot’ll get to hear o’this.” .
“I’ve got the tape Beck made of the train going past,” said Hamish.
“How? What…?”
While Hamish talked, Blair only half listened to him, his mind working busily. Somehow he had to claim this bit of detective work as his own. He became suddenly conciliatory and smiled horribly. “Aye, well done, lad. You’ll be needing your bed. Just let’s be having that tape.”
Hamish meekly passed it over. He knew what Blair was going to do. Blair would tell Daviot that he, Blair, had instructed Hamish to phone Birmingham and had sent him out to look for the tape.
Which was what Blair subsequently did and was met with heavy suspicion. “What were you about,” demanded Peter Daviot nastily, “to send one lone constable out on the search? And phoning the CID in Birmingham and giving them instructions is your job, not Macbeth’s.”
“I phoned them myself,” howled Blair.
“That’s not what I heard. I heard that Hamish Macbeth phoned.”
“I mean,” said Blair quickly, “like I just said, I told him to phone.”
“Next time, do the job yourself.”
“Yes, sir,” said Blair meekly, and he hated Hamish Macbeth from the bottom of his heart.
Eight
When love grows diseas’d, the best thing we can do is put it to a violent death; I cannot endure the torture of a lingring and consumptive passion.
—Sir George Etherege
As a sign that Superintendent Peter Daviot knew who had uncovered Beck as the murderer of Rosie, Hamish Macbeth was invited to the interview in Strathbane when Beck was brought north. Blair was in a sour mood. Hamish, in the comer as usual, looked at Bob Beck with a sort of wonder. He was a grey-haired man with a slight stoop, thick spectacles through which pale eyes looked out at the world with a childlike innocence, a rather large nose and a small mouth. He was wearing a well-pressed grey suit and black lacing shoes. He was hardly the picture of a man who, driven mad with passion, had plunged a knife into the naked I back of Rosie Draly. Had it not been for the evidence of the tape, Hamish would have been tempted to think that he had merely been unlucky, that he had travelled to Sutherland to see Rosie on the very day of her murder.
